Kulin seems deserted this Sunday morning. The town’s womenfolk are sleeping-in after last night’s dinner dance. The kids on bikes yesterday must be watching TV. Two brown honeyeaters pirouette noisily overhead. They bank sharply before alighting unsteadily on a power line. Theirs is the only movement on Stewart Street.

My newly five-year-old daughter, keen to explore, kicks up a shower of red pebbles from the gravel footpath. We wander past a derelict shop. In the window is a faded sepia photograph of a swarthy bloke wearing a mug-shot smirk. His white shirt-sleeves are rolled up above his elbows, business-like. My pint-sized companion is captivated by his eyebrows, which sit on his jutting forehead like two hairy caterpillars. I read the caption: